Well, in the wake of the flog-admission and the coverage its getting, it looks like the Edelman saga has finally hit the trades, with an article in Advertising Age. There are a few interesting tidbits, but what’s really quite surprising is how it ends off:
In explaining how such a mistake could happen, Mr. Rand of Ketchum noted that in recent interviews with candidates for Ketchum’s new media public-relations practice, many “are boastful about how they go into blogs and post anonymously and have great success. These are thoughtful, smart people, but they thought this was OK.”
So, yes, this is not a quote from Edelman — but it offers an interesting window into the public relations world in and of itself. The YouTube/ MySpace/ Facebook generation is growing up immersed in social media, sucking at the teat of instant messaging and bit torrent jollies. And it may be that it thinks it may be smarter than the rest of us.
Of course, it would make absolutely NO sense to think that a super A+ client such as Wal-Mart, who probably has a little less money than God to spend on its Marketing budget, would get junior executives working on the account.
But one HAS to wonder, in absence of any other logical explanations (certainly none from Edelman himself) exactly how all of these shennanigans were allowed to transpire.
Yes, now we’re getting into the realm of complete conjecture, hypotheses, and plain ol’ guessing but one wonders what sort of input and day-to-day work junior executives DID have on the whole Edelman fiasco.
Like, was Edelman’s arrogance really blind faith?
Was the REAL hubris on behalf an entire generation of newer executives who having lived through the birth of a social media figured they were quicker, smarter, and better able to game the blogosphere?
Forget the PayPerPost debacle — if this is in fact the case, it represents a bigger threat — a bigger cause of pollution to the blogosphere than PayPerPost ever could, and the blogosphere could be looking at a sockpuppet future lined with astroturf faster than you can say “flog”.
UPDATE: Thanks to some investigative blogging, indeed the puppets employees behind the flogs turn out to be junior ad executives from Edelman! But as one blogger puts it — there’s no way to know if their names / identities haven’t been used for the purposes of masquerading the true authors of these flogs. Its still ludicrous to believe that such a huge client would have been palmed off to such junior members of the team. Sure enough, still no reply from Mr. Rubel.
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[...] Update: When I first wrote this it occurred to me that the best strategy for dealing with an insurgency is often to challenge it subversively – essentially, as its own insurgency. Not to get all “Heart of Darkness” on this, but it does strike me as an effective approach – putting aside issues of ethics or propriety. Deep Jive Interests notices an example in AdAge from Ketchum of exactly that approach: “In explaining how such a mistake [Ed: the Walmart example] could happen, Mr. Rand of Ketchum noted that in recent interviews with candidates for Ketchum’s new media public-relations practice, many “are boastful about how they go into blogs and post anonymously and have great success. These are thoughtful, smart people, but they thought this was OK.”” Related Posts [...]
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[...] Deep Jive Interests, Could Edelman Give Birth to a SockPuppet Future?: Well, in the wake of the flog-admission and the coverage its getting, it looks like the Edelman saga has finally hit the trades, with an article in Advertising Age. There are a few interesting tidbits, but what’s really quite surprising is how it ends off: In explaining how such a mistake could happen, Mr. Rand of Ketchum noted that in recent interviews with candidates for Ketchum’s new media public-relations practice, many “are boastful about how they go into blogs and post anonymously and have great success. These are thoughtful, smart people, but they thought this was OK.” [...]
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